As is well known, various user equipment, including computers (fixed or portable), mobile telephones, personal data assistants (PDA's), organizers and the like, can be used to communicate with other user equipment in a communication system or to access the Internet to obtain services. Mobile user equipment is often referred to as a mobile terminal, and can be defined as a means which is capable of communication via a wireless interface with another device such as a base station of a mobile telecommunication network or any other station, including other mobile terminals. Such terminals can be adapted for voice, text message or data communication via the wireless interface.
As digital convergence reshapes the way businesses and users use and share information, a merging of digital communication technology, digital media and computing is taking place. And user equipment is being developed to enable users to access the facilities provided by such convergence. In this regard, so-called high-end mobile phones (or smart phones or communicators) are examples of mobile terminals that have been developed to fulfill this requirement. These mobile phones not only perform functions of a conventional mobile telephone, but may also perform functions previously limited to personal computers, personal digital assistants or the like. For example, a number of these mobile phones include functionality to install or load third party software into the mobile phones.
As is also well known to those skilled in the art, various pieces of software may be malicious in the guise of viruses, Trojan horses or some other element introduced by a hacker in order to abuse the mobile phone or otherwise gain access to functionality of the mobile phone. It is well known that personal computers (PCs) are susceptible to such problems, and solutions have been proposed in the field of personal computing to overcome them, including implementing detailed security measures to prevent, detect and/or respond to the security risks posed by such malicious software. However, the open operating systems of most of the mobile devices, such as the current Symbian™ operating system (OS), do not provide a fine grained security model for overcoming the security risk. Furthermore various solutions that have been proposed are application-level solutions which are software based, and as such, can be bypassed by a sophisticated programmer.